Dr. Manal Shehabi

Dr. Manal Shehabi is an applied economist with an internationally recognized expertise in development, policy, and sustainability at the intersection of economics, energy, environment, and climate in resource-dependent economies.  She is Founding Director of SHEER Research & Advisory Ltd and an Associate Faculty Member of the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Oxford.  She is a transfer pricing advisor, a consultant to the International Energy Agency, and an expert to the UNFCCC on response measures, just transitions, and economic diversification. She uniquely combines academic insights with experience in industry and policy.

Her work has been at the forefront of global debates for solutions to global problems. Most recently, she presented by invitation her research and recommendations at COP28’s First Annual High-Level Ministerial Round Table on Just Transition, to help ministers and delegates prepare for the text and activities of the Just Transition Work Programme, operationalized at COP28 in 2023. She constructed an economic model for policymaking in Kuwait, and advised the International Energy Agency on energy transition in producer economies. Her work made important contributions to the analysis of fiscal sustainability, economic diversification, energy transition, decarbonization, geopolitics, and policy alternatives.

In addition to her academic publications, she was lead or contributing author of various policy reports, most notably fiscal space and social impacts assessments, briefs to T7 (G7) and T20 (G20); the IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere; a report to UNFCCC on impacts of response measures on developing countries presented at COP26. Her other policy work includes economic policy assessment and design, hydrogen national strategies (including being a reviewer of Kuwait’s white paper on a hydrogen strategy), decarbonization, climate security, and just transition. She is an advisory board member of the Energy Futures Initiative-KAPSARC Joint Research Program on energy transition.

A polyglot, she regularly advises government officials, international organizations and think tanks, and firms including mid-size and Fortune 500+ companies in energy, mining, petrochemical and other industries.

She is also a Research Associate of the Centre for Climate & Energy Policy, ANU Crawford School of Public Policy; Member of ANU's Institute for Climate, Energy & Disaster Solutions at The Australian National University, and Research Fellow at the Economic Research Forum.

Previously, she was Academic Visitor at St Antony's College, the University of Oxford, Senior Research Fellow and OIES-KFAS Research Fellow at Oxford Institute for Energy Studies; Doctoral Researcher at the University of Western Australia, and Academic Visitor (Germany, Kuwait, UK). Beyond academia, she was the in-house expert for a multinational energy & mining services company and economist/manager in a Big Four firm, and launched and managed a business public policy project in the US. A regular speaker at international seminars and conferences, she has been interviewed and cited in major international media outlets (like Time Magazine, Bloomberg, and the BBC). Her language skills include fluent French, Spanish, Arabic, English, low intermediate Mandarin Chinese, and basic Hebrew.